What is the difference between 301 redirects and backlinks?

[aliho]

i have seen some 301 redirects on my site  billsonline, can anyone please explain the difference between backlinks and 301 redirects,  i have read some articles where the writer was stating  that  301 are not good for website.

[victor.celer]

The redirects are intended to keep link juice when migrating to a new domain. Actually they just help the existing users find the new domain. If there are redirects to your domain from unrelated websites the Google bot should be smart enough to ignore them. That's why it's better to have backlinks from unrelated sources than redirects.

[aliho]

I believe the below reply that is explained by Mr Victor, is absolutely correct.

[MickEdwards]

A 301 redirect is the header response sent when a page does not exist or not required and the redirected page is loaded instead.  Typically a 301 redirect is created when a page is taken down.  A 301 redirect is not bad for a site.  Redirect chains can be bad - so 301 to 301 to 301 etc.

What you want to look at is if you have 301s in your menus, homepage or main content linking to main pages.  These links should be either removed or updated to the new URL.  There should be no 301s here, it's good housekeeping.

A backlink is an link from an external site linking to a page on your site.